Electrical Achievements

The recent announcement that Nikola Tesla, the famous electrician, had succeeded after much experimentation in telegraphing a distance of twenty miles without wires will not tax the credulity of those who have followed the phenomenal development of the electrical science during the last two decades. Neither will it astonish those who are familiar with the wonderful discoveries and inventions of the wizard of Houston street. The harnessing of electrical energy to serve the industries and pleasures of mankind has engaged the work and thought of the best scientific genius of the two hemispheres, but no name shines more resplendently in the constellation of electrical stars than the renowned Tesla. The scientific world is never unprepared for news of startling discoveries in his laboratory. His predictions concerning the possible utilization of electrical force in facilitating the various commercial and industrial activities of mankind are no longer regarded with incredulous amazement. His "glow-lamp" system of illumination was at one time regarded by many as an iridescent dream, but Tesla soon astonished the scientific world by demonstrating that it is possible to obtain an Incandescent light without the usual filament of the incandescent bulb by the transmission of waves of electric energy. He has so improved his electrical oscillator that he is able to produce from a glass tube a white light in which only thirty per cent. of the electrical energy is expended in heat instead of ninety-seven per cent. as in the incandescent light. Two years ago Tesla declared that the time would come when ships would be propelled across the oceans by electrical power generated by Niagara Falls, the current being supplied through a floating wire or cable. Twenty years ago such a prediction would doubtless have subjected its author to much ridicule even among scientists. But to-day no well-informed electrician will have the temerity to declare that Tesla's prediction is impossible of fulfillment. Indeed it cannot be said at this time that there are any insuperable obstacles in science in the way of such an application of electrical energy to oceanic navigation. On the contrary, it is quite evident that its ultimate accomplishment merely resolves itself into a question of adequate generative power and the construction of a cable that will enable the ships to take the current from it. A man who can create and transmit waves of electrical energy in such a way as to produce hundreds of bulbs of incandescent light without filaments and can set the whole earth in vibration and set the vibrations to the measures of an international code, so that they may be read in any part of the world and thus make direct communication without telegraph wires, is a man who is privileged to make any kind of prophecies as to future discoveries in electrical science. The world will believe him, no matter how extravagant they may appear.